“We too are stardust.”

If you’re lucky, you’ll come across a book that will open your eyes up to new worlds and new ideas, as well as open your heart up to new people.

If you’re really lucky, that book will become a bridge, irrevocably linking you to those wondrous individuals.

Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World is one such book for me. Part fiction, part philosophical textbook, it’s a novel that urges its reader to learn. It’s a book for anybody, whether they’re like the protagonist in their early teen years, a young adult ready to start living the examined life, or an older reader who’s interested in understanding the principles of different philosophical schools of thought.

I’ve read this book twice and it’s been nearly six years since the last time*, but even with that temporal distance, this book still means so much to me, especially since it became one of the first things that helped forge an amazing friendship.

It was said friend’s birthday just two weeks ago and, because I can be a sentimental sap, I took it upon myself to make something that represented that initial bonding process. In addition to being sentimental, I can also be overly ambitious, as I decided that this would take the form of a typography print that featured one of our favorite excerpts. Never mind the fact that I hadn’t done anything typographically-heavy before. But this is the result:

It was printed at a much higher resolution on photo matte paper and I’m so pleased at the result. Although some of the texture detail is lost at this size, the italicized and regular text is still discernible to indicate two speakers. Yes, this is a conversation, but I did away with the quote marks. *shrug*

Have any of you read a book that has led to fantastic friendships?

*Despite all that, as I was writing this, I found out that I still had so much to say, so keep an eye out for that post in the future!